NATIONAL

Aspiring young soccer player George Maskini was supposed to leave for Thailand but his dream was drowned in a sea of confusion at Cape Town airport’s boarding gates.The Cape Argus first reported on the struggle of George and his mother to get his travel documents sorted out.Mrs Maskini initially applied for a new passport in July and got an SMS informing her that her application had been received.George’s parents are from the Democratic Republic of Congo and have permanent residency in the country. He was born in South Africa. George previously had a passport, but it expired in May. After reading about his plight, Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Fatima Chohan intervened and personally handed him a “passport”.

South Africa has not received any formal request for asylum from ousted Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, Parliament has heard.Luwellyn Landers, deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation said social media rumours that Mugabe has or would request asylum in South Africa were not true. “At this point, there is no indication if he or anyone else has requested asylum. Until that happens, the views on the matter are just that,” Landers told Parliament in Cape Town.

Althea Jacqueline Roberts from Zimbabwe first applied for asylum in South Africa in 2009. Although her papers have been continuously renewed‚ in all these years she has never been given permission to remain in the country for longer than eight months; mostly she gets three-month renewals. On 1 November‚ she was given only one month.She has had 21 extensions. Each time she has to go in person to the Home Affairs office on the Foreshore‚ Cape Town‚ sometimes queuing for most of the day.She said it took her five weeks to renew her papers last year. Home Affairs officials said something was wrong with the computer. She lost a lot of time and money continuously returning to check if the computers were back up again.Her current asylum document states: “To be booked for appeal hearing”. She has been waiting for the appeal hearing for five years.

Thousands of Zimbabweans call South Africa home having moved here to seek a better life and to escape economic hardship in the land of their birth. They have been watching developments in Zimbabwe very closely with most expressing mixed emotions over the current situation.

Europe and Africa should deal with each other as equal strategic partners, and the latter should not be treated as a junior and dependent partner. This is the message that President Jacob Zuma will deliver at the African Union European Union summit which is set to get under way in Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Among others, Zuma will also focus on the SA-EU strategic partnership, which is commemorating its 10th anniversary this year. Oxfam, which is also attending the summit, called for the EU to ensure that its investments effectively support those most in need. In a statement, the organisation also called for the EU to revise its migration and refugees policies. “More than 80% of African migration happens inside the continent and Africa is the world’s biggest host of refugees and internally displaced persons. “European migration policies have an impact on many more people than just those who aim to reach Europe, and Oxfam daily witnesses the devastating impact of the EU migration policy measures on people on the move.”

REGIONAL

European and African leaders gathering in Ivory Coast have an opportunity to confront one of the biggest sore points between the two continents: migration. The two-day African Union-European Union summit begins on Wednesday as Europe is grappling to stem the biggest wave of asylum seekers since World War II, with more people arriving by sea from African countries this year than from war-torn Syria. Anxiety over migration has stoked populism in Europe and driven electoral gains by far-right parties from France to Hungary.

Hundreds of African refugees are being being bought and sold in “slave markets” across Libya across Libya every week, a human trafficker has told Al Jazeera, with many of them held for ransom or forced into prostitution and sexual exploitation to pay their captors and smugglers. Many of them ended up being murdered by their smugglers in the open desert or die from thirst or car accidents in the vast Libyan desert, said Salman*, the human trafficker.

A morgue in the southern city of Sabha – an entry point for many refugees coming from Africa – is overflowing with corpses, with faulty refrigerator making the situation worse, according to a Libyan health official.

More than 200 Nigerian migrants stranded in Libya have been returned to their home country, Nigerian officials said.The 242 migrants landed at Lagos airport on a Libyan Airlines flight at around 9:00 pm local time (3:00pm ET) on Tuesday. Among them were women carrying children and at least one man in a wheelchair. Nigerian authorities say they worked on returning the migrants from Libya in collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM). Some of the 242 men and women who returned had been in Libyan detention camps while others willingly approached the Nigerian embassy in Libya to return home because of hardship there, authorities said.

For Europe, migration has become an almost existential problem. The influx in 2015 of more than one million refugees and migrants fleeing war, persecution and poverty in the Middle East and Africa created deep divisions and raised difficult questions about the EU’s commitment to open borders. It is threatening the viability of the union and providing an opening for right-wing, anti-immigrant, anti-Islam political parties and movements across the continent.

For Africa, despite the tragic deaths of many of those in transit, the migration of its citizens to Europe has not been a major concern. The vast majority of African migrants, contrary to perceptions in Europe, move between countries on the continent, which places great strain on host nations such as South Africa and Senegal.

INTERNATIONAL

The rights, protection and well-being of uprooted children should be central commitments of global migration policies, UNICEF said today ahead of a meeting in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, on safe, regular and orderly migration. The 4 to 6 December meeting is a major step toward drafting the Global Compact for Migration, a landmark intergovernmental agreement that will cover all dimensions of international migration. It is the moment when world leaders will begin to forge consensus on political and financial commitments in line with the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants and the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

The European Union-Horn of Africa Migration Route Initiative, also known as The Khartoum Process, was established in 2014 between 37 EU and African states in order to stem mass migration from the Horn of Africa. It also intended to combat issues of human trafficking and smuggling. Dr. Lutz Oette is the Director of the Center for Human Rights Law at SOAS, University of London. He says the policy puts more migrants in danger and needs a complete overhaul.